The ABB IRB 340 FlexPicker's legs instantly put me in mind of a kind of merciless Matrixesque robot, snatching up human bodies and doing terrible things to them. But apparently, it's the world's fastest industrial robot, and is used to pick and sort items on a production line— innocent things like sausages and croissants. By fastest, it means 10g of acceleration: that's zero to 280mph in a single second. Which makes for one heck of a rapid sausage, as the fascinating (and eerily Matrix-like) video reveals.

That arm/pincer thingy can do over 150 picks per minute, deal with payloads as big as two kilos, and carries a camera so it can check products that don't meet the grade. Looks like it's using it to sort those croissants... the funny-shaped ones go where, we wonder?

Amazing stuff, even if I can't get those scary images out of my head. It'll be nightmares of robotic world domination tonight. [ABB via BotJunkie]